Put a Pallet on It!
How I defeated Pinterest gawking and actually built something
There’s a line in Fight Club that always gets me, “No matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled .” Like you spent all this time looking and finally got a couch, and now you don’t have to worry about that — until you think you need another newer couch, that is. For some reason I think of this whenever I am wasting time on pinterest. Is ‘liking’ or ‘pinning’ stuff on pinterst actually contributing to my life in any way?
One Saturday, wasting time inside on pinterest, I decided to take action. Instead of continuing to be lured to pinterest’s pictures of perfectly constructed, painted and well-lit benches, tables, outdoor bars, and 1001 things to do with glitter or how to make that perfect wine bottle lantern, I would actually do something. So I picked up some pallets from a nearby cafe and decided I would decide what to do with them later. It felt good to do something though. Of course I was just acquiring more stuff, and what would Tyler Durden say about that, but baby steps, baby steps.
And later it turned out to be — because I let those pallets sit in my garage for months before I trudged them back out of the darkness in an effort not to be a hoarder.
Around the same time, my partner, John, and I adopted a puppy. Izzy, we’ve decided, is the world’s greatest dog ever. forever. that has ever been….as I’m sure most ‘parents’ think as well. We showered her with attention and toys, even our friends shipped goodies from across the country for our precious Izzy. So it felt natural when the pallets emerged from the garage that they should be used to make a doghouse for our perfect pup.
I roamed back to Pinterest for ideas and with inspiration from several different projects set out on my own to make a doghouse the world had never seen, the greatest doghouse ever. forever. that ever has been —just like Izzy deserved.
First I had to take apart the pallets. I thought this part would be easy after watching numerous youtube videos, but it was the most painful part of the project. I used a crowbar on the edges and budged the nails a bit but eventually (impatiently) just took the circular saw to the edges and used the crowbar to get the middle nails out. This dissection took me days because I had four pallets. Perhaps you are one of those people with more upper body strength or persistence or even patience, but I am not so I took an easier route and went for the blade.
Once I had the pile of pallet wood ready to be reassembled, I had to do some thinking, map out plans, and decided to find my own inner path — f*%^ the pinterest examples.
I used some brackets leftover from our deck to nail to what would be the inner posts of the doghouse. I then nailed these posts to one of the pallets that I did not take apart that would be the foundation of the structure.
Then, in what I may look back at later as a halfway formed thought, I went complicated. I took one pallet board and nailed perpendicular to that the boards that would become the walls. I did this for the two sides and the back of the house, then nailed each wall to the inner posts. A bit clunky, but I got it done.
Once, I had the walls up, I moved on to panic about the roof. I had originally planned to make a wood roof, but once constructed, the doghouse looked a little too ‘woody.’ So I switched paths for a corrugated metal roof and set out to Home Depot. Once there, I ran into another problem. They would not cut corrugated tin. I was out of ideas. To at least feel the momentum of progress, I picked up a can of stain and painted the doghouse that day.
The next day running errands at a local hardware store with my partner I came across a 3' x 3' panel of sheet metal. Eureka! I grabbed the panel and eight screws for $27.12. Back at the house, I pre-drilled a hole through the metal in the four corners, then drilled in the screws to secure the roof. This was actually the simplest part of the project. Exterior done.
The inside of the doghouse still had holes in between the pallet foundation, so I decided to pick up a pillow at Goodwill to put on the inside so Izzy would not fall through the cracks.
Once I got to Goodwill, I found a much better solution since all the pillows were too small. I bought one of those padded border-things that they put in cribs for $1. When I got home, I cut up the crib border in six pieces and stapled the pieces inside the doghouse. Interior done.
Rubbing my hands together with my project completed. I announced it to Izzy who was more interested in chewing on a fern than checking out her new place.
Once I crawled in though, she came bounding over and stayed for approximately thirty seconds before being lured away by a bee buzzing by. Hours of work and $28.12 later, whether my dog appreciates it or not, at least I finished it and staved off hours of building my empire of pinterest pins. No matters what goes wrong, at least I have the doghouse issue solved.
